Translating Numbers into Feedback: Providing Students with Automatically Generated Feedback

Sebastian Hedtrich¹ and Nicole Graulich^1,

¹Institute of Chemistry Education, Justus-Liebig-University, Gießen, Germany

Cite this paper:
Sebastian Hedtrich and Nicole Graulich. Translating Numbers into Feedback: Providing Students with Automatically Generated Feedback. American Journal of Educational Research. 2018; 6(2):108-116. doi: 10.12691/education-6-2-3

Abstract

Universities nowadays are confronted with the challenge of offering students sufficient formative feedback about their learning progress. Undergraduates in particular struggle in this almost impersonal learning situation, in contrast to their experience at school. Web-based trainings often do not allow a comparable formative feedback from a teacher, as current Learning Management Systems only offer basal feedback mechanisms. The Learning Management System Analyzation Kit and the Easy Snippet Feedback Edit are software tools that have been developed to overcome this shortcoming. The intuitive design of the software allows teachers to develop small feedback generating programs, which use the educational data of EDM solutions, raw data of the LMS, or just teachers’ individual records to compose individual formative feedback messages for all students. Initial evaluations show that students appreciate this new type of feedback, and that even inexperienced users can easily operate the software.

Keywords:
blended learning automated feedback LMS distance learning

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